Winona Ryder

In The Iceman, Winona Ryder plays a woman in denial. A woman who doesn't seem to realize her husband is really a serial-killing hit-man.

And Ryder can relate – kind of.

"I think we all have stuff [from past relationships] we'd rather not think about," Ryder, 41, told PEOPLE Monday at the special New York screening hosted by Grey Goose. "Or things we remember differently in retrospect, or have selective amnesia [about]."

Some things you totally see coming – that Bill Murray would be a great FDR in Hyde Park on Hudson, for instance. Or that Ben Affleck's Argo, about rescuing American embassy workers in Iran, would somehow nail the Hollywood satire/nail-biting escape genre. (Oh, who are we kidding? It created the Hollywood satire/nail-biting escape genre – and it's getting Oscar buzz to boot.)

"Fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk," Ryder, 39, tells GQ. "I was with my friend, who's gay. [Gibson] made a really horrible gay joke."

And he didn't stop there, the Black Swan actress says. "Somehow it came up that I was Jewish," Ryder says. "He said something about 'oven dodgers,' but I didn't get it. I'd never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment."

Natalie Portman’s extraordinary performance in Black Swan may have been a foregone conclusion, but there were some delightful moments in the Toronto International Film Festival that took me by surprise. Here are a few:

The Metaphysical Clint Eastwood:The guy can do anything, sure. But who knew he wanted to explore such a big, ethereal question as what happens after you die? In Hereafter, he intertwines three stories of people who have brushes with death, including Matt Damon as a reluctant psychic, slowly unspooling their lives, then bringing them together in unexpected and not altogether tidy ways. It’s certainly not Eastwood’s best film, but it’s a welcome departure for a man who tends to dwell in a world that’s entirely more visceral and elemental.

For the past seven years, Winona Ryder has lived mostly out of the spotlight.

Now, with a role in Star Trek and the release of another movie – The Private Lives of Pippa Lee – opening in Europe soon and in the U.S. in the fall, the actress, 37, is talking about the strain of being in the public eye.

Ryder, who was engaged to Johnny Depp after co-starring with him in 1990's Edward Scissorhands (they split when she was 19), says one of her first big challenges was dealing heartache during the height of her fame.

"I had just done Dracula and Edward Scissorhands. I had just had my first real break-up, the first heartbreak," she tells Pippa Lee director Rebecca Miller, who interviewed her for the U.K. edition of Elle, out Wednesday.

"And I think it was really ironic because, like, everybody else just thought I had everything in the world, you know, I had no reason to be depressed, everything was sort of at its peak, but inside I was completely lost.

"I remember feeling, 'I can't complain about anything, because I'm so lucky, I'm so lucky.' After that I realized I needed to take time off more [regularly]."

Move over LC and Heidi. Looks like frenemies of the past are resurfacing. Gwyneth Paltrow, in a recent Goop newsletter, revealed that a former friend-turned-foe was once "hell-bent" on taking her down.

Although she kept her cool, Paltrow said she was delighted in seeing her frenemy face humiliation. Who do you think was the "venomous and dangerous" person out to get Paltrow?

With her career getting back on track after several years of self-imposed exile, Winona Ryder is talking for the first time about her December 2001 arrest after she'd been videotaped trying to make off with merchandise from the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue.

Winona Ryder, still on probation for felony shoplifting, had her charges reduced to misdemeanors on Friday, as a judge praised her progress and eased restrictions against her so she may resume her film career.